We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again..

~Henri Cartier-Bresson

When Caleb Williams was just starting out in the portrait business, he came across a picture of his grandmother, one clearly taken by a professional at her home on Waln Street. She was standing at the end of her dining room table, a table all set for a dinner party.

“She was famous in Wellsboro for her dinner parties,” Caleb says. “This photo had a particular impact on me, as it was her, in her home environment, the way I remembered her.”

Fast forward to 2010, when Caleb began running an “anniversary couple of the week” contest in the Wellsboro Gazette.

“The idea was to honor every week the longest married couple,” he says. Information about the couples came in via a website. He’d choose a couple, go to their home to take their portrait, ask questions about their life together, write up the article, and provide it with the photo to the paper. The contest, which included prizes from local sponsors, ran for four years.

“It was a gift I wanted to give to these couples and their families, a gift I wanted to give to my clients,” Caleb says.

Now, over ten years later, coinciding with Valentine’s Day and commemorating his own retirement from the portrait business, a selection of about forty framed portraits from the over 200 he took for the Gazette column will hang at the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center at 134 Main Street in Wellsboro for most of February.

“This is my swan song,” he says.

Caleb’s questions and answers for each couple pictured, including the big “how did you make this last?” question, will be part of the show.

“The final question was always ‘What advice would you give a young couple starting out to stay married a long time?’,” Caleb says. “People need to come to the exhibit to find out.”

The show will be called Marriage Wisdom.

“We are hoping that people will come in to see family members featured in the photographs and celebrate their enduring love,” says Gmeiner Director Carrie Heath.

For most of the couples he talked with, Caleb says, the “giddy love of newlyweds had been transformed to a deep, abiding love, full of self-knowledge and knowledge of the other, and of forgiveness for themselves and their spouse for the personality foibles.”

Marriage Wisdom opens on Saturday, February 1, with a reception from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

“The lovely ladies in the Friday Club will be providing refreshments at the reception, which is free and open to the public,” Carrie says. The exhibit will remain open until Sunday, February 23. Gallery hours are 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission to the gallery is always free. Get more information at (570) 724-1917.

As for what Caleb, himself married nearly forty-eight years, plans to do after retirement: “Clean the attic,” he says with a smile.

Now there’s some marriage wisdom.